When All Is Lost
by tigerlily0909
Summary: When Harry and Ginny lose their children to a new Dark Lord, they will do anything to get them back. Even a dangerous Dark spell. By sending their memories back in time, they think they'll have enough information to stop it all from happening. There's only one problem: they didn't know just how far back they'd be going... H/G, Canon-compliant through epilogue


**Disclaimer:** I am not J.K. Rowling. Never have been. Never will be.

**A/N:** Rated M for language and dark themes.

Perhaps thinking "all was well" had been pushing his already-worn-out luck. That seemed to be where it had all gone downhill. Not ten minutes after arriving home, Harry had been rushed to work by an urgent floo call from Minister Shacklebolt. It would seem that there was a new Dark Lord on the rise. Like _Lord_ Voldemort, he'd fashioned a ridiculous name for himself. "The Dark Prince" he'd signed his first murder. But still, Harry had underestimated him. They all had. That had been his second mistake.

It was not two years later that the impossible happened. Again. Hogwarts was attacked by the Dark-Fucking-Prince and his meager group of followers. Honestly, when the aurors got there it didn't even seem like there would be much work. The Dark Prince had killed rarely, preferring to terrorize simply by playing on the public's fear of another Dark Lord. More to the point, he was just standing there without even a wand to defend himself. Then the moon rose…and the fight truly began.

From that day forth Harry's life would never be "well" again. Hell, it would never even reach mediocre, or horrible, or bloody miserable. Life was quite simply nonexistent. Life would never move forward for Harry Potter. He would age, certainly, but he would never laugh again, never smile, never even feel a hint of joy. He was a broken man with broken hopes and broken dreams and an equally broken wife.

You may have guessed what happened that day at Hogwarts, you may not have. It didn't really matter to Harry. Guessing wouldn't change the facts. Four innocents died that night – a rookie auror and three students – though many, many more had been bitten or mutilated. Nearly an entire generation had the werewolf gene now, which may have been the goal all along. The Dark-Asshole had been captured at sunrise after a night of hell. Still, all in all, not a bad battle for the wizarding world. They went to bed counting their blessings that the Dark werewolf of a Prince couldn't come close to touching the wrath of Lord Voldemort. But not Harry and certainly not Ginny.

They had lost everything that had ever really mattered. Teddy. James. Albus. Lily. Gone in a flash of teeth and claws. That first night, Harry waited for the sobs to come as he lay with their still bodies, refusing to leave their sides even after death. But they never came, or at least, not until later. It was funny he told them. He had been an orphan all his life. An orphan – there was a word for it. Like there was a word for widow and a word for widower. But there was no word for a parent who lost a child. Perhaps it was too atrocious a thing to speak of.

And no one ever did speak of it. Harry and Ginny stood stoic at their children's funeral, too lost to cry or speak or move. And no one spoke. No one, not even his faithful Ron and Hermione, knew what to say. So Harry and Ginny went on existing. Alone.

*0909*

Ginny woke up next to her husband as always. She waited for the sounds of her children, but they never came. _They're safe at Hogwarts, going to classes and pulling pranks. They'll be home soon,_ she thinks to herself, a small half-smile forming on her lips. But they weren't and they wouldn't. She'd played this game every morning for the past six months – refusing to open her eyes, giving herself just a few extra moments as a mother before the world came crashing down around her.

And just like every morning, there comes a moment when she _has _to open her eyes. When she _has _to look up and see the cracks in the ceiling – the ones that Kreacher had tried and failed to fix after Harry attempted to blast their bedroom to smithereens. When she _has_ to roll over and find her husband – still asleep – gaunt and pale and listless. When she _has_ to wake herself up, shower, get dressed and comb her hair. She pulls the brush through her red locks and pretends it is Lily's – that everything is still alright and she's just combing her baby girl's hair. But she wasn't and she never would again. She watches as the brush soars through the air and shatters the mirror. The same way it did every morning when her fantasy exploded in on itself.

She hears her husband's sleepy "Reparo!" and watches as the broken pieces mend themselves. If only the broken pieces of her life could mend so easily.

They walk, hand in hand, down to the kitchen – as they did every morning. And like every morning, Kreacher had prepared a veritable feast, as though expecting the appetites of four growing children to suddenly descend on it.

Later, Ginny wouldn't quite be able to recall why she started in on Kreacher that fateful day, but she would be forever grateful that she did.

*0909*

"Unless you can bring them back I don't want your help, you stupid little elf! Get out! Just get out!"

"Ginny," Harry warned cautiously as Kreacher broke down in sobs.

"Kreacher…Kreacher wishes he could bring back the litt-little masters and miss-mistress, bu-bu-but he can't lose Master and Mistress too," he moans.

Ginny's body goes into lockdown. _There is no way to bring back the dead_. But her heart is thrumming to a dangerous beat: Hope. _He's just a stupid little elf_, she reminds herself.

"Kreacher, what are you talking about? Are you saying there's a way to…sacrifice ourselves for them? T-to bring them back?" her husband asks, the same damn hope ringing in his voice.

"N-n-no that's not what Kreacher is saying," the elf says, wringing his hands.

"Well then, what ARE you saying?" Ginny demands.

"There's is a spell, a Dark spell that Kreacher found in the books you told him to clear from the library when Master Teddy was just small. But it's too dangerous for Master Harry and Mistress Ginny to use!"

"What is it!? What is it, you little elf?" she screams, lunging for him.

Harry wraps himself around her. "Kreacher, Kreacher can you please tell us? Please?" he asks, in a much gentler voice.

"Th-the spell is difficult and Kreacher is not be understanding it, but he thinks it will be sending a person's memories back in time to their younger selfs."

Ginny feels the hope burrowing under her breast bone again. If she and Harry could send their memories back just a few years then they might be able to stop Conan and his gang – she refused to call him the damn Dark Prince. They could save their children. The hope flares like a firework.

"Show us!" husband and wife command together.

Kreacher, who could not disobey a direct order, finds himself popping to his den and back.

Kreacher hands the book to Harry, shooting a frightened glance at Ginny.

"Page three-hundred-and-ninety-four," the elf says quietly.

Ginny grabs the tome – so dusty and moldy its spine is unreadable – from her husband and quickly flips to the correct page.

"Memorias per temporum retro," she whispers. Her salvation had arrived.

*0909*

The spell is more complicated than they imagined, requiring a complex potion to start and the spell to be recited three times once it's been swallowed. Harry has never heard of a spell and potion working together, but Ginny tells him it was relatively common in the Middle Ages. In any case, it is easier said than done, as this particular potion will soak up all their memories like a pensive once ingested. If they wait for their memories to return before saying the spell, it won't work. The author recommends writing the spell and the year you want to return to in a prominent place so you'll know what to do when the time comes. Harry paints the incantation on the wall. Beneath it he writes "Teddy, James, Albus, Lily". He doesn't write 2017. Ginny doesn't remind him because seeing their names there is so much better. He agrees.

For a year, they brew the potion – buying obscure ingredients from the all-but-closed Knockturn Alley, chopping and slicing and skinning, adding just the right amount at exactly moonrise, stirring slowly counter-clockwise for four days straight, taking turns sleeping so they never have to take their eyes off it. Kreacher makes sure they eat and bathe, and keeps guests away. They hate not speaking to the only family they have left, but they won't be talked out of this. And, perhaps it is selfish, but there is always the bitter resentment that they were the only ones to lose their children that day. Several of their nieces and nephews were now werewolves, but with the Wolfsbane potion being provided free by the Ministry to all victims of the Battle it doesn't really make much difference. Hogwarts was practically a school solely for werewolves. The Ministry couldn't afford to be bigoted. And Molly and Arthur had lost Fred of course, all those years ago, but they'd had six other children to think about; six other children to comfort them and give them grandchildren. Harry and Ginny had nothing and soon they would be nothing. You see, the spell creates a sort of second reality. In this second reality, Harry and Ginny would wake with their current memories years earlier. To them, it would seem as though they'd time traveled to their younger bodies, but to the rest of their family here, their bodies would remain – empty, memory-less, and incapable of forming new ones. They expected they'd have to be placed in Saint Mungos next to poor Frank and Alice once Kreacher told the Weasleys what they'd done. But it didn't matter to them because they would get something out of the deal the Longbottoms hadn't – their children back.

Exactly 365 days after their argument with Kreacher, the potion is ready. It is a deep, smooth midnight blue. Harry fills two vials and passes one to Ginny.

"Are you ready for this?" he whispers.

She nods. "As ready as I'll ever be."

"On the count of three then…One, two… three."

Considering all the grotesque things they'd put in it, the potion is surprisingly one of the less disgusting ones Harry's tasted. Within moments of swallowing it, there is warm pressure in his head. Slowly, he feels his memories start to leave him. He knows this is supposed to happen and does not panic, but as his memories of the last few years fly away, he becomes more and more desperate. He tries frantically to capture them again, but soon there is nothing left and he wonders what he was trying to catch in the first place.

Harry slowly looks around and spots a red-haired woman on the ground next to him. Despite her thin frame and messy hair, there is something intrinsically beautiful about her. He knows somewhere inside him is a memory of her, but he cannot bring it to the surface. He doesn't even know her name. Then again, he doesn't even know his own name so perhaps that is the more pressing concern.

"Are we supposed to do something?" he asks her, trying and failing to pull up a memory, any memory.

"I don't…do I know you?"

"Yous is supposed to say the spell," a strange creature with big eyes, pointy ears, and strange wrinkly skin says.

Harry thinks he should recognize the creature, but he can't recall what it is. Saying the spell seems somehow right though. He looks at the wall the creature pointed to and sees the words "memorias per temporum retro" written in blue paint three times. Beneath it are the names Teddy, James, Albus, and Lily. The names seem oddly familiar to him and his heart contracts just looking at them. He wishes he knew why.

He turns to the red-haired woman and frowns. "Shall we?" he asks.

She grabs his hand and nods. Together they say "memorias per temporum retro, memorias per temporum retro, memorias per temporum retro"… Harry thinks of those names on the wall, repeating them over and over like a mantra in his head. As soon as the last _retro_ is spoken a blinding pain splits open Harry's head. He wants to cry out, but the scream dies on his lips as the pain disappears as quickly as it came. Suddenly it feels as though he is flying, hurtling backwards through the air. Somewhere in his mind he thinks he likes flying, but he does not like this. It feels like it's going on much too long. It feels wrong. Just when he thinks he will pass out or be sick, the motion stops and he is sucked into blackness.

He doesn't know that he and Ginny made a critical mistake in not writing the year on the wall. They didn't know that thinking of a person would you drag back, back, back until the spell ran out of ammunition. They didn't know holding hands would combine their power and ensure that the spell wouldn't die out for quite some time. They didn't know they'd be waking up in bodies too young to have children of their own.

*0909*

Kreacher watches with tears in his eyes as his last Master and Mistress recite the spell he had told them the year before. He watches as the last hint of life fades from their eyes and their hands fall to their sides. Kreacher sniffles. Master Harry and Mistress Ginny _always_ held hands. He wants to sob, but he has a job to do. He pops over to the Mistress Ginny's childhood home. He shocks the oldest Mrs. Weasley who drops a tray of cookies all over the floor. The oldest Mrs. Weasley is not fond of Kreacher, not fond at all. She has called him many nasty things over the past year, but he has never let her past to see Master Harry and Mistress Ginny. Perhaps that is why she is so shocked to see him here.

"Kreacher has a message for you, Mistress Ginny's father, Mister Ron and Missus Hermione," he says.

"I'll go get them," she says, running through to the backyard as though she senses Kreacher's urgency. She doesn't even pick up the cookies.

He is interrupting a family gathering. He knows this. Mister Ron and Missus Hermione had come over to beg Master and Mistress to come to their anniversary party, but Kreacher had not let them in. And now, now he'd have to them that…that... He finally lets the sobs take him. _Oh his poor Master and Mistress!_ He could only hope they'd succeed in their new reality.

The four people arrived from the backyard very quickly, while Kreacher is still blowing his nose into his tea towel.

"Kreacher! Kreacher, what's wrong?" asks Missus Hermione. She was always so nice to Kreacher and now he is forced to tell her… tell her…

"Master and Mistress…have used a…a Dark spell…and now theys is…gone!" he says between sobs.

"WHAT KIND OF DARK SPELL?"

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY'RE GONE!?"

Kreacher cries some more, then pops back to the Manor. Several loud cracks come fifteen minutes later and he knows he has been followed. He has already lowered the wards. He sits in the kitchen rocking back and forth; watching his Master and Mistress….they is so empty!

When Mistress' father finds her, he cries. Mistress' mother screams at Kreacher.

"What did you do to them, you little elf!"

Kreacher points weakly at the book and cries some more. He watches Missus Hermione run for it and read quickly. He knows exactly when she understands what Mistress and Master have done because her mouth drops open in horror.

"Harry, Ginny, No!" she screams, and Kreacher cries some more.

*0909*

Kreacher knows his time is coming to an end. He has served four generations of Blacks and Potters and now it is his time to go. He has known this for a while. He has no master now. Master Harry and Mistress Ginny were moved to Saint Mungos like they'd said they'd be, and he had brought them flowers every day. But there is no more house to clean, no more food to cook, no more orders to take. He knows it is his time. He only hopes he will see Master Regulus again. With one last look at his Master and Mistress, he lets go and prays to see Regulus.

He feels himself floating. When he opens his eyes, Master Regulus is there and, to his surprise, so is Master Sirius. Master Sirius says that he's sorry for how he treated him and so thankful that he took care of his Harry. Kreacher cries some more. He is happy, really truly happy.

He sees Master Harry and Mistress Ginny empty selfs on the other side of the Great Meadow, but he pays them no mind. He fulfilled their last wish. _They is happy now too_, he hopes.


End file.
